I've been collecting old Mac's and Amiga's for a few years now. Our first family computer was a 16K ZX Spectrum and when I was a teenager I bought a brand new A500 but I never really progressed past using it to play games. For quite a few years I had no real interest in computers, I was more into cars and drag racing. A few years ago I found an old Amiga listed on Trademe and that got me started collecting Amiga's and renewed my interest in them. I moved onto collecting late eighties and early nineties Apple Mac's as well as picking up Atari ST's, C64's and then Amstrads. A shortage of space meant I had to reduce my collection down to Mac's and Amiga's and at one stage I had reduced my Amiga collection to just a couple but I have been slowly building it back up again.I'm not such a whiz on the software side of things (but I'm learning), I do like the actual hardware and I'm a bit like I was with my cars always trying to modified and improve them for better performance.

I missed out on the fun of the Atari and Amiga 16 bitters. I was in my mid 20s and more concerned with career and family. I had to make do with an XT clone at home bought because it was compatible with my work computers.

I've made up for it by getting an Amiga 500 and Atari 1040STFM in the collection. Nice games machines. I'm sure people used them to explore those early BBSs too!